Review: Wrecking Ball - Miley Cyris (music video)

by Mzwandile Poncana

Recently I saw a quote on Twitter.com which said this - 'Favorite American Pass-time: Mocking young female celebrities.'

I didn't really need a lot of thinking to work out who exactly they were referring to. It was generalized of course - over the years different female celebrities have had their share of cruel mockery - by in this specific time, after the world infamous VMA performance, it was obvious that the quote was a clear reference to the extravagant Miley Cyrus. Her VMA performance - consisting of the summer hit single 'We Can't Stop' and a duet of 'Blurred Lines' with Robin Thicke - made everyone freeze their interests of any other trend on Twitter, and dedicate an amount of energy to report how 'tragic' the performance was. The specific VMA show ultimately became one of the most tweeted events in 2012, simply due to Ms. Cyrus' 'tragic' performance. The world was ablaze with different methods of down casting every inch of the poor 20-year-old, fires of journalists clanked at their computers, swarms of reporters posted pictures upon pictures. On Facebook, memes were created and posted with every passing millisecond. On Twitter, every minute a total if 150 tweeters digitally roared of how shameful she and her fame was. Everywhere one turned, three words all associated together came out despicably: 'Miley Cyrus', 'Inappropriate' and 'twerking'. One could not run from the hatred expressed by almost everyone with Internet access, it was exhausting.

Whether I agree or not with this amazing outbreak of prejudice from society- which I do not-is based on Miley's intention in her performance. When planning, every artist aspires to create a product which either : reflects a strong meaning for a generalized audience -or- reflects themselves and their own personalized personality. Miley obviously had a professional idea on how she wished to express how exhausted she was with the person she had previously been. In this case, the previous 'innocent' 'lady-like' Miley Cyrus was what Miley must of thought was 'crafted by her managers'. She was living behind the façade of how people wanted her to behave. How people expected a girl of her age was to behave. And anything else that was not associated with teenage Disney innocence is way too much of a disastrous taboo. However, judging by this sudden change in Music,Style and Performance, we can see how uncomfortable Miley was, living behind the façade of an innocent Past-Disney actress who had to behave like one. And I say, for the sake of it, she had every fucking right to change. She felt since she had built herself a platform in the industry of general fame, she could use tactics that relate to what teenagers find 'modern' as a shining weapon to only reach a higher level of respect from them. And that's what she wished to create, and nobody should judge her on reacting appropriately in a professional sense to Society's recent interests. She saw what the world found entertaining and realized, it was everything she wished to be. Not hiding behind the overpowering little shadow of her Past-Disney Princess lie.

That being said, I move onto my impression of the 'Wrecking Ball' music video. When I finished watching it, I knew straight away how malicious the comments towards it were obviously going to be; rude expressions of rude misinterpretations. 'Nudity is inappropriate  'What has gone wrong with her' 'blah blah blah blah I'm better than this bitch because sitting behind a computer and being fabulously hilarious for subjective appreciation from objective people i don't know is way better than her working her ass off to get billions upon fucking billions'. It's all the same attention-seeking story every social network you go to. The offense people feel is written on every single Twitter timeline, Facebook timeline and Journalism tabloid. Of course, this offense and rage from her past performance would blind them into automatically viewing the video with a negative approach, subconsciously already telling themselves that it's going to be terrible. (Last performance was awful, this must be awful as well tehehe good evening folks welcome aboard the society train of logic that will take you as far as we decide you to go toot toot all aboard) and with all due respect (and by that I mean no respect at all), you people are burying yourselves in your own trash. Society has always done it and will continue on doing it. Missing yourselves out on some real good music simply because of ONE distasteful performance. And you will continue to nit-pick every fucking thing that you see, hear or feel is wrong. Every small little thing. In this music video, Miley is clearly expressing the product of her plans towards changing her future into something she is comfortable existing in, changing the way she expresses herself towards the world into a way that will be comfortable for her to express. And as for these small nitpicks such as nudity, I would absolutely love to see  how many tweets per minute Rihanna got about her 'Stay' video... Or how many ANY OTHER artist who has been nude in a video got. Nudity in music videos displayed anywhere in public by any other artist have never been a real dilemma or drastic situation. I know this, Miley knows this. But the sad thing is, society knows it as well. The same vital society that insist its completely inappropriate to be naked on TV. I say, it is an invisible subjective rule for General society to have at least one shamed-down celebrity to mock at in boring situations. The Internet may be the future, but a society that uses it for the purposes of positivity it was initially created for, is not. Miley is doing the right thing by existing in the life she chooses to exist in. I found the song absolutely breath taking and the way she interpreted the audio into video was even the more brilliant. She used colorful cinematography and pop culture arts and craft to bring the song to life. I personally am not a fan of pop usually, but this (with 'Applause' by Lady Gaga) has to be the exception. There was nothing wrong with Cyrus's video and my one wish is for everybody to leave her the fuck alone.